When Kevin Hartz’s security system failed to alert him as an intruder rang his doorbell and tried to enter his San Francisco home late one night, the serial entrepreneur decided existing solutions weren’t good enough. His co-founder Jack Abraham had experienced similar frustrations at his Miami Beach residence. In 2024, they launched Sauron — named…
Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew…
India’s startup ecosystem raised nearly $11 billion in 2025, but investors wrote far fewer checks and grew more selective about where they took risk, underscoring how the world’s third most-funded startup market is diverging from the AI-fueled capital concentration seen in the U.S. The selective approach was most evident in deal-making. The number of startup…
Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew…
Image Credits:Getty Images 7:00 AM PST · December 27, 2025 Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash…
A classic hardware startup, Naware set out with a problem — kill weeds without chemicals — and relentlessly tinkered until they found a solution…
French startup Ÿnsect shot into the spotlight when “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. touted its merits on the “Late Show” during Super Bowl weekend 2021. Now, nearly four years later, the insect farming company has been placed into judicial liquidation — essentially bankruptcy — for insolvency. The company’s demise is hardly a surprise, as…
Each year, we ask some top investors what they think the next year will bring. Last year, some investors thought the IPO market would be back up and running by now (which didn’t quite happen), while others thought the momentum behind AI was poised to accelerate (and they were right). This year, TechCrunch did the same thing,…
In Brief Posted: 2:03 PM PST · December 24, 2025 Image Credits:Groq Nvidia has struck a non-exclusive licensing agreement with AI chip competitor Groq. As part of the deal, Nvidia will hire Groq founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other employees. CNBC reported that Nvidia is acquiring assets from Groq for $20 billion; Nvidia…
There was a time when most Americans had little to no knowledge about their local data center. Long the invisible but critical backbone of the internet, server farms have rarely been a point of interest for folks outside of the tech industry, let alone an issue of particularly captivating political resonance. Well, as of 2025,…





